


Artificial Lights

by elegantanagram (Lir)



Series: HSWC 2013 Bonus Round Fills [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Comfort, Drawn Parallels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied Incest, Introspection, M/M, Not Romance, Or very mildly implied incestuous thoughts, POV Third Person, Romanticized Suicide, Sadstuck, Wordcount: 100-2.000, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/elegantanagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He's seen so many weird fucking things in the game but what finally scares him is artificial eyes blinking on and off, like they're trying to focus on his face, what scares him is this sign of consciousness divorced from a body and with so little autonomy that if it's really alive, it might be better off dead.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artificial Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first bonus round of the [Homestuck Shipping World Cup.](http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/) It seems I accidentally wrote a deathfic, which feels strange and unusual and which might be something I've never done before. It was supposed to be redrom Brobot/Davesprite but it's more emotional comfort than romance and I doubt I can make it any more clear that this ain't really a happy story. 
> 
> The quote that prompted this was:
> 
>  
> 
> _"May the bridges I burn light the way." - Dylan McKay_

-

Davesprite chose to ollie outie from the prospitian battleship, because if there was anything his Bro taught him, it was the importance of a true dramatic exit.

The problem is, once he's gone, there isn't anywhere much else to go. Sure, there's the dull blankness of the medium, the empty voidspace outside the new game session they've all ricocheted through paradox space to reach. That's all pretty boring. Once you've seen one black expanse of nothingness, you've really seen them all. 

In the end, Davesprite settles down on a planet full of swaying green grass and the distant smell of ozone. It's about as devoid of life as it gets, nothing but shambling undead monster skeletons around and with all the attention they pay him, Davespite writes them all off. Chill dudes, if you don't like conversation and don't really care if your social partner has a face. Too bad he left all Nannasprite's baking behind, maybe he and his new skelebros could've had a picnic. Made things outright domestic up in this desolate bitch of a planet. 

It's pretty lonely, when he's honest about it. And that was the point. 

Davesprite's insides are a fucking riot of conflicting messages, a hall full of dissenters all shouting to be heard over their numbskulled companions. None of his mystical spritely organs can agree on which way to hurt. First one of them wants to ache dully, then another wants a burst of sharp pain, and after that a third chooses to sputter like an engine failing to come to life, and Davesprite suspects something inside him has ruptured. He feels like he's going to go nova, by which he means he has no goddamn idea what a supernova feels like before it blows, unless it feels too big inside, like it's expanding too fast and there's nowhere for all that energy and mass to go except pain. 

If he wasn't going to last past their game session, as a defunct mechanism of the system divested of its purpose now that they're eternities away, he wishes someone would've told him that up front. He wishes he would've been divested of his spritely duties at the start of the three years. Maybe he could've just disappeared into the void, a candle winking out in the dark. Instead he got three more years with his friends, goofus Harley and doofy Egbert and they were fucking amazing years, but now that his ticket's up he flat-out refuses to do a tragic deathbed scene in front of them.

That shit is fucking shameful as hell.

He hurts, and he's probably dying, if game constructs can even die, and fuck anyone who thinks he wants to do that in front of his best friends, in front of a peanut gallery of two plus too many squirmy nattering consorts to count. He has his dignity. He'll damn well face his end in peace, and privacy.

Davesprite curls up under one of the monolithic stone edifices on the planet and thinks of Stonehenge, wraps his tail around himself and embraces the feeling of being in an ancient place. He bets there's hardly anywhere more romantic to bite it, it's like one of those crummy, musty old novels Lalonde loved so well. He misses Rose. Wishes he could've seen her one more time before his rad as hell blazing out of glory, but it's too late for that and pining over unattainable wishes has to be every kind of unattractive. 

There's something hard behind him, something cold and uncomfortable to rest his back against, and it doesn't feel like stone. He shuffles his wings, feathers rippling in and out of place, and reaches behind himself to try and push it away, or to pick it up and hold it before him.

It's a metal head.

He holds it in between his hands, palms squarely braced on cool metal cheeks, and its smooth inhuman face stares back at him. He wonders, irrationally, if he looks that impassive, with his shades firmly entrenched upon his face. Its eye sockets are dead and dark, but while he's touching it, the metal starts to warm beneath his hands. He looks at it evenly, until the portals of its eyes flicker ichor-poison green, and he almost throws it hard across the meadow.

Jesus shitfucking christ it's a goddamn robotic head and the thing is staring at him, the lights of its eyes flickering like dying coals and it feels fucking cemented to his hands because after the first scare he can't for the shortening life of him convince himself to let go.

He's seen so many weird fucking things in the game but what finally scares him is artificial eyes blinking on and off, like they're trying to focus on his face, what scares him is this sign of consciousness divorced from a body and with so little autonomy that if it's really alive, it might be better off dead.

Something inside of him aches, and he's not sure if it's the familiar feeling of dying, or something new and untested. 

And as he's looking, it starts to sink in, the precise sweep of sculpted metal hair, the angles to the planes of its robotic face. Davesprite knows those shapes, feels a pang of recognition from that particular accumulation of lines and angles. He always had his unspeakably douchebaggy hat, but on the rare occasions when Bro swiped the battered thing off his head by the brim, when he ran his fingers through his hair once or twice until it settled into a configuration other than the squashed look of ugly hat hair, when Bro did that, sometimes his hair looked exactly like this.

It's the sharp features of his dead brother staring back at him, transplanted onto a head that's one step from being just as dead and unresponsive. But its eyes are a command prompt green that's the exact opposite of Bro's, much as he hid them beyond his shades (this head _should_ have shades) and his swagger at every opportunity. They're flat discs made up of countless points of bright green light, never all lit up at once, never all lit in the same sequence.

They flash at him like constantly-changing constellation points, a starscape remaking itself in every second. He's not imagining it when they start to form words.

_Hello._

_Hello is somebody out there._

Davesprite almost drops the head again.

But he doesn't. He's seen weirder things, has stared back in the faces of creatures that wanted to kill him, and this is just a disembodied robotic head trying some form of freaky technologic communication. He's got this shit handled.

“Yeah dude,” he says. “Just me, but I'm only pretty much the most awesome guy you could've met so I bet it's an honor. I'm honored to meet you too bro the company here sucks.”

_Hello._

It flashes again across the tiny windows of the robot's eyes, and Davesprite worries it's a broken record, that there isn't a goddamn thing inside this tin can except fried circuits.

_It's nice to meet you._

The relief washes through him first, and then a vague feeling of shame, because he's that stupidly excited to have someone to talk to, even if talking just means text on a screen. Maybe it's ironic. For so many years, talking to his best friends just meant text on a screen, too.

_Are you here to kill me?_

The text scrolls like a marquee, so Davesprite has to read it three times before it vanishes completely, back to meaningless patterns. The feeling inside him now is less pain, more cold.

_I never quite died._

He hears it in Bro's voice, rusty and a little bit gravelly, dug out of memories a solid three years old just to jackknife into his guts and dig around for whatever's burning, maybe run it through once or twice to see if that fixes it better or makes it much, much worse. He hears it in Bro's voice, and it aches.

“Nah man,” he says, and his own voice shakes, wobbles a little. He presses his lips tight and doesn't continue right away, because if Bro heard that mess of a reply he'd be so ashamed their ancestors would feel it. Which doesn't mean much, Davesprite figures they're each other's own ancestors, so they'd just both feel it real bad. Shame for miles. 

“Nah,” he says again, and this time it comes out even. “Kinda came out here to get my croaking on myself. Give me a couple minutes, maybe an hour tops, and I'll do the dying for you. Maybe there'll be a floor show. Some fireworks. I'd promise tearful sisters weeping over my corpse but that won't happen until later, and probably not then 'cause by the time Lalonde gets here even this body should be long gone.”

Wow, that was a bunch of depressing shit falling right out of his mouth.

_Can I_

Davesprite doesn't realize it's “talking” until he's missed the words, and it's all scrolled by a second time.

_Can I come with you?_

“Yeah man,” Davesprite says, after a firm bracing swallow. “Yeah, why not. We'll make it a party. Just tell me what I gotta do to make you comfortable, and then we'll get to the business of ending us together.”

_Reach inside._

_Pull out the rest of the wires._

He doesn't say anything. It's just a metal head with a lightshow in its eyes, it's not like John is asking him to run him through with Dave's sword. It wouldn't be like John dying, that first time that fucked everything up so bad, wouldn't even be like Bro dying no matter how much his stupid childish brain is clamoring it will be, in those recessed parts he didn't touch too much in the past three years. 

It's just a metal head, and he'd pull out its insides, and he'd kill it. No big deal.

He's winding down anyway, this is the curtain call, pretty soon the lights go out on everybody's good old buddy Davesprite and it's all over. If he doesn't do it now, maybe no one ever will, and even if it's just text on a screen mister robot guy sounds so goddamn earnest.

“Sure,” Davesprite says, quieter. “Just give me a minute.”

He sits there, and it's more like ten, more like fifteen minutes while the pixelated stars of its eyes flash at him without meaning. 

“We'll go together,” he says. 

He reaches inside, and he yanks out the wires, keeps pulling until there's nothing left and his fingers are all scraped raw, pulls until the screens of its eyes are blank and dim. The burning radioactive light goes out completely, but it's fine. He's going to join it pretty soon anyway. 

-

-


End file.
